Whatever else, director David O. Russell and his star Bradley Cooper are on the same page when it comes to their new film, "Silver Linings Playbook," which opens Friday.

In the film, based on a 2008 novel by Matthew Quick, Cooper plays Pat Solitano Jr., a former Philadelphia schoolteacher who has just finished a mandatory eight-month stay in a mental institution after having beaten up his wife's lover. Pat, who has been diagnosed as bipolar, is returning to live in the home of his parents, played by Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver ("Animal Kingdom"). Mom is a homemaker and Dad, since being laid off, a successful bookmaker.

Pat develops a precarious relationship with Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence), the widow of a cop who has expressed her grief by sleeping with everyone in her office and getting fired for it. And all of the characters, including Pat's therapist, are obsessed Philadelphia Eagles fans.

Despite dealing with psychiatric illness and dysfunction, the film is often funny, romantic and in its way a celebration of family.

If difficult to neatly sum up, "Silver Linings Playbook" nevertheless won the audience prize at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, and the buzz is that it will be a contender in a number of categories this awards season. Known for its successful Oscar campaigns, the Weinstein Co. is opening the film in a few markets on Friday - Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, among them - and expanding to some 2,000 theaters on Wednesday.

Advertisement

Russell, 54, whose last film, "The Fighter," had seven Oscar nominations (Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won supporting acting trophies), was given the novel of "Silver Linings Playbook" when it was still in galleys by the late filmmaker Sydney Pollack.

"It was a story that I related to very strongly because my older son (who has a small role in the film) dealt with many of these matters himself," Russell says.

The director actually wrote the "Silver Linings Playbook" script before "The Fighter," but the project had trouble getting off the ground.

However, the success of his boxing film, which also dealt with family dynamics, allowed Russell to return to "Silver Linings," which involves Italian-American football lovers around Philly.

Russell liked the idea of casting the amiable Cooper, who is known for his roles in the "Hangover" movies and action films, as the sometimes grating Pat. The character's unfiltered directness is unnerving at times but still can elicit laughs.

"I love the emotional rawness of Frank Capra and Martin Scorsese," says the director, who like his star has an Italian-American mother. "And I love the warmth that Capra gets to - but he also disturbed people with Jimmy Stewart as much as he warmed them. He freaked people out with Jimmy Stewart."

Russell thinks Cooper can reintroduce himself to movie audiences with the role of Pat, who can go flying off the handle with a few notes of Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour," the song played at his wedding.

The actor, 37, acknowledges that Pat is a bit of a departure for him.

"Pat doesn't conform to the social norms of how one human being speaks to another," Cooper notes. "He says what he feels. There's not much passive-aggressiveness. It's all there."

A Philadelphia native, Cooper knew De Niro from the 2011 thriller "Limitless," in which they played adversaries.

Actors Robert DeNiro, left, and Bradley Cooper, attend the premiere of "Silver Linings Playbook," to benefit the Tribeca Film Institute's Tribeca Teaches Educational Programs, at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Monday Nov. 12, 2012 in New York. (Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

In "Silver Linings Playbook," however, it was a different vibe - a complicated father-son relationship.

"It was a real blessing coming in this film knowing that I was going to play Bob's son because I love him," Cooper says. "So it was very easy for me to say the word dad and have it resonate within my body as I said it and make myself believe it. It helped me anchor the character in the same way it was to have a Philadelphia Eagles jersey on."

Cooper is a huge Eagles fan; one of the last things he and his father, who died in 2011, did together was attend an Eagles playoff game. "The film was very personal for me," he says.

Russell says over the years he and De Niro had connected about their own sons and he tried to tailor the script to the actor's rhythms.

"You're respectful and you let him do his thing," says Russell about the Oscar-winning actor. "You ask him if he wants a discussion. That's how I do it. I said, `You want to talk about this?' And sometimes he said yes and sometimes he said no."

For the role of the fiery Tiffany, Russell says Lawrence wasn't on his radar initially.

"We had three strong choices. A lot of actresses wanted to play this role, and we didn't know what her chops were. We thought she was too young," says the director about Lawrence, 22. But after her audition, via Skype, he was convinced.

"She can have an ageless quality to her, and she can seem much older than she is," says Russell. "And in some ways she is older than she is in spite of herself. Her age became a non-issue. She's a force of nature and that was that. She's a very special actor."

Cooper didn't know a lot about Lawrence before she was cast, but they clicked when they first talked on the phone. A short time later he was at a Philadelphia dance studio "with this woman's hands underneath my sweaty armpits learning this heavily choreographed dance routine ... . So it was a baptism by fire in terms of our working relationship."

The two then shot their next film together, the indie drama "Serena." Cooper is also going to do Russell's untitled next film, about the 1970s FBI Abscam sting operation, with Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.

Asked if either of them have their own playbook for life, Russell answers, "I do for sure," and starts chuckling.

"My son taught me that ... otherwise I probably would've never been drawn to `Silver Linings Playbook,"' he says. "But people like my oldest son and a lot of people showed me that you can't afford to have a negative attitude. It can lead to all sorts of ..."

Rockies are on pace to lose 93 games this seasonThe Rockies lost three of four in St. Louis and are on pace to lose 93 games as they come home for a three-game series with Seattle before going back on the road again to face Washington.